The Right On Crime campaign is prominently featured in a new article in the The New York Times headlined “Trend To Lighten Harsh Sentences Catches on in Conservative States.” Former Reagan Attorney General Ed Meese, a signatory to the Right On Crime Statement of Principles, is quoted as saying that the campaign is a “careful refining of the process.” Meese further explains: “Most of us who are involved in this are very much in favor of high incarceration of serious habitual offenders. The whole idea is getting the right people in prison, and for those people for whom there is evidence that chances of recidivism are less, to work with those people.”
The article also pays special attention to recent successes in Texas. The Times notes that “the Texas prison system is now operating so far under its capacity that this month it is closing a 1,100-bed facility in Sugar Land — the first time in the state’s history that a prison has closed.” (For more on the closing of the Central Unit in Sugar Land, TX, see this article in The Austin American-Statemsman.)
Marc A. Levin of Right On Crime is quoted as saying that “[i]n Texas for the last few years we’ve been driving down both the crime rate and the incarceration rate…[a]nd it’s not just Texas. South Carolina, Kentucky, Arkansas and Ohio in the past year or so have done major reforms. These are certainly not liberal states. That is significant.”